Kraven the Hunter is going to need a Christmas miracle if it hopes to avoid becoming the latest SSU movie to bomb at the box office.
The latest (possibly final) Spider-Man-less Spider-Man spin-off from Sony Pictures debuted behind already low expectations, taking the at No. 3 spot at the domestic box office with just $11 million from 3,211 theaters. This marks the worst opening for one of the studio's SSU movies, behind even notorious misfire Madame Web ($15.3 million).
Kraven did receive slightly better reviews than Madame Web (11%) with a still abysmal 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, and also earned a C grade on CinemaScore.
The SSU is actually the only major superhero movie franchise (possibly the only movie franchise, full stop?) with every instalment hit with a "Rotten" score on the review aggregator. Venom: Let There be Carnage came closest to getting a "Fresh" score with 57%.
Kraven the Hunter reportedly cost an upward of $110 million to produce (the budget is said to have ballooned after last year’s writers and actors strikes).
“As the superhero genre has declined over the last five years, Morbius, Madame Web and Kraven have led the race to the bottom,” says David A. Gross of movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “Kraven’s budget was downsized according to the realities of the market, but it’s still too high for this kind of result.”
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“Kraven the Hunter is the visceral story about how and why one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Set before his notorious vendetta with Spider-Man, Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as the titular character in the R-rated film.”
Kraven the Hunter is an upcoming American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel Entertainment. Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing, it is intended to be the sixth film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU). The film was directed by J. C. Chandor and written by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, and Richard Wenk.
In addition to Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the title role, Ariana DeBose will play Calypso, a voodoo priestess and Kraven's on-off love interest (in the comics, at least); Fred Hechinger is Dmitri Smerdyakov, aka the Chameleon, who is Kraven's half-brother; Alessandro Nivola will play Aleksei Sytsevich, aka the Rhino, and Christopher Abbott will portray another villain known as the Foreigner.
The movie has been rated R for "Strong bloody violence, and language."